Twenty One Thousand Days...

Well, I haven't really waited that long, it just seems like it. It is however, one of my favorite songs. I have waited 21 years for my new driveway and front porch. The plumber's sink always drips, and the cobler's children have no shoes.....

Since we have decided to move, we really needed to put in a new driveway. It will make the house sell much faster in this neighborhood, and it looks pretty spiffy (Hi Joleen :)).

Here are pictures from before, during and after.

Here is the driveway as Bill is tearing it out. Skip was tied up, so Bill got to have a loader rodeo!

Woohoo :)

Look at that sucker buck!

I gotta love him, but my husband is the most anal retentive person alive. See how neatly he had to stack the concrete? He fussed with it more stacking it than he did tearing it out. All in all he had a blast. Of course he vehemently denies this, but I know better.

This is a big assed pile of roots that we had to tear out from under the old drive, and the place the new sidewalk is going to be placed. Sheesh!

Here is my work truck. Pretty cool huh? Oh here are some of the tools we use. The one I use the most is the corrugated float in front. It gets pretty heavy after a while :)

This is our motley crew. Here are Jorge and Francisco, doing what they do best...watching us work. The other one is Pedro. He is a good guy, and works pretty hard. It has been a sad week for Pedro. His father passed away. He wanted to come to work though. I guess it keeps his mind off of his father :(

Here is the front porch ready to be placed. I didn't get there fast enough to take a real before pic. The porch was about 5 feet deep and was covered by the overhang. The new one is the bomb. It is big enough to have a small table and chairs! The drive is ready to pour too. We poured the top section of the drive and the porch at the same time.

Now with the concrete placed.

Here they are stamped. We only stamped the borders, and left the fields plain. This neighborhood is very plain, and if we had stamped the whole driveway, it would have been way too much. As it is, it will look very fancy when it is finished. Bill did an excellent job designing it. It is fancy enough to attract attention, but not too overwhelming for the house. The stones on the porch are cantilevered and will look like actual rocks laid on the porch, and then grouted. Coolness. It is very strange to have to develop new habits after 21 years. Suddenly there are no steps into the door. I almost fell down the first time I went out the door! The dogs would not come out for a while. It was funny.

The stones on the border of both the driveway and the porch will be chemically stained to match our mailbox post. It is really going to make it special. It is probably too fancy for this neighborhood, but I believe it will make the house sell much faster.

Here is the approach that kicked our collective asses. The mud came hot, and it just flat blew up on us. That means it got hard WAY too fast, but Bill saved my ass again. He's cool :)

Here is evidence that I really do work, and also that I really need to go on a diet. Ugh.

Monday we will set up and pour the sidewalks on either side of the driveway. They will be stained to match the borders. Almost done! YAY!!!! Who would think something as mundane as a driveway would be so exciting??